Downtown Vancouver highrise design reaches across, too

Derrick Penner and Bethany Lindsay, Vancouver Sun06.13.2015

The design by architect Ole Scheeren for a landmark residential tower at 1500 West Georgia St. in downtown Vancouver features horizontal elements jutting out. The development is by partners Bosa Properties and Kingswood Properties. Handout: Buro Ole ScheerenHandout

The design by architect Ole Scheeren for a landmark residential tower proposed for the site at 1500 West Georgia St. in downtown Vancouver, by partners Bosa Properties and Kingswood Properties. Handout: Buro Ole ScheerenHandout
/ Vancouver Sun

A woman passes the headquarters of China Central Television (CCTV) in Beijing. Ole Scheeren, who helped Rem Koolhaas design the distinctive building, has another eye-catching design for a tower at 1500 West Georgia in downtown Vancouver.Feng Li
/ Getty Images

A distinctive Jenga-like tower proposed for downtown Vancouver was designed to be a landmark on the city’s skyline, but there are concerns it signals a move away from harmonious urban planning.

Architect Ole Scheeren calls his design for 1500 West Georgia “a tower that reaches out horizontally to engage the space of the city.” The proposal from Bosa Properties and partner Kingswood Properties calls for a 500-foot residential tower with rectangular blocks jutting out from its sides, to be placed adjacent to the existing green glass office tower.

The developers were looking to build a “landmark building that tries to change and improve the skyline” of downtown when they bought the site last fall, said Daryl Simpson, senior vice-president at Bosa.

“We like that it’s the entrance to downtown, we like the views that a tower like this can afford through to Stanley Park, the West End and Coal Harbour,” he said.

The partners selected Scheeren’s firm to design the landmark structure after a short competition during which they looked outside of Vancouver for an innovative idea. Scheeren’s portfolio includes work with star architect Rem Koolhaas on the unique CCTV headquarters building in Beijing.

The partners have submitted a letter of inquiry to the City of Vancouver signalling that they have a design they would like to proceed with.

The tower itself seeks to “open up the inert shaft of the tower,” the architect said in a statement on his website, with a more sculpture-like stack of rectangular forms.

And while Simpson accepts that not everyone will like the unique design, he believes it will be “wildly received.”

“If today is any indication, based on emails and phone calls we’ve received from peers and friends and colleagues in the business, we think it will be really, really well received.

“That being said, with anything new and innovative, I think there will be people for whom it’s not that, and that’s OK.”

For Brian Jackson, Vancouver’s general manager of planning and development services, the Bosa proposal is the kind of signature design the city is looking for to improve the city’s overall architectural fabric.

“It’s an extraordinary design, there’s no doubt about it,” Jackson said. “The applicant and architect have put an incredible amount of thought into creating something that is truly unique in Vancouver.”

Jackson said the design conforms to the city’s recently approved West End plan, which allows for buildings of the height Bosa and Kingswood are proposing, as well as the “need to make a statement” on a prominent site.

However, the proposal is only in the pre-application phase, Jackson added. The city now needs to review how the proposal meets existing policies, and staff will respond with comments to Bosa and Scheeren before they make a formal development application.

And Jackson said they’ve asked the developers to hold an open house before submitting that application, for which he expects a mixed response.

That seems to be a reasonable prediction. When contacted Friday afternoon, one former city planner couldn’t think of a single positive thing to say about the design.

“I’m still in shock from seeing the picture this morning,” said urban designer Ray Spaxman.

“This building looks like a fairly regular sort of highrise with ship containers shoved in and out at various degrees on the facade.”

He worries that Vancouver doesn’t have a cohesive plan for the downtown skyline, and that with the current craze for celebrity architecture, the city will turn into a collection of attention-grabbing buildings with no real connection to each other.

“Everyone’s striving to be the most important building in town. It’s interesting — in the old days it used to be cathedrals and then city halls. Now it’s communications offices and highrise residential for rich people,” Spaxman said.

For Gordon Price, director of SFU’s City Program, the biggest concern is how the building would relate to the simple lines of Peter Cardew’s glass-fronted tower on the same site, as well as the public plaza that would separate the two.

“We’re trying to fit development into its context and there’s no way to do it without being disruptive somehow,” he said. “They have put it in the only reasonable place that it wouldn’t be intrusive.”

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Downtown Vancouver highrise design reaches across, too

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